Re: Firefox addin to replace 404 pages with archived pages from wayback machine

On 16 August 2016 at 16:26, Noah Mendelsohn <nrm@arcanedomain.com> wrote:

>
> On 8/8/2016 11:58 PM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>
>> Let's say a user has bookmarked a page for reference.  And that page has
>> moved, but is yet archived.  I can see value for a user to see the
>> material
>> that she had seen before, from an archived version.
>>
>
> Your example is of a page you describe as "moved". Shouldn't the server
> return 301 for that? (Or possibly 303 - See other)?
>

I think 301 or 303 would be considered a best practice.  And servers are
sometimes incentivized to do this through search engine traffic, I suppose.

But it may be the case that the server owner just doesnt have time to do
that.

Im trying to figure out which web architectural principle this is most
applicable to.  In my mind Im thinking about the decentralized property of
the web.  The server acts as definitive but the user at their description,
might want to over ride that.  Perhaps this is indeed a slippery slope.  Im
curious as to where you think it might end, what spung to mind was some
kind of spaghetti of status codes negotiated between server and client.

I like the idea of the user being able to override or augment the decisions
made on the server side, with those on the client.  Ive not fully thought
through the possible downside of this, and would be interested to hear if
there are thoughts on this.


>
> 4xx is indicated to the user agent, and I think that fundamentally in web
>> arch the user is the ultimate curator of the content presented.
>>
>
> Yes, as I acknowledged in my post, but from a protocol point of view 404
> means "doesn't exist" (Not found). If there's a real need for "Not found,
> but please offer users an old version if available" I would think a new 40X
> code would be the more architecturally robust way of giving the server
> control.
>
> Noah
>